Thursday, October 14, 2010

Apprentice Week Two

This week, posh Raleigh had to go home because his brother stepped on a bomb in Afghanistan. Get well soon, Raleigh's brother.

This meant the 'boys' team was one 'boy' short. So Stella stepped over to theirs to act as chief boy for the week. Either none of the men are tall or else Stella is a giantess, as she towered over them. According to the papers, Stella was/is a gangster's moll. I like her. She is dignified, even when the 'boys' sniggeringly tried to get her to strip down to her pants for a model shoot.

But I'm jumping ahead. Today's task involved making an interesting & unique thing to take to the beach, then pitching it a la 'Dragon's Den' to the buying departments of major retailers.

I go to the beach a lot. While I'm in swimming, I'd like some sort of locker to keep my stuff in. Maybe one that could be buried under the sand. I'm scared of thieves, you see.

Something to clean the sand from between my toes would be good too. Don't you just hate that feeling when you put your socks on with sand in them? Don't you HATE it? Eh?

Sadly, neither team solved my problems. The boys invented a towel with a coolbox/storage compartment in it. The coolbox doubled as a pillow. It rolled up like a sleeping bag. Not such an awful idea.

The girls invented a plastic & canvas beach lectern. Yes. You put your book on the lectern, see, and then you read from it. Possibly aloud or at least with your lips sounding out the letters. Because you'd have to be pretty stupid to buy this shit.

When you need to turn the page of your book, you get up from the comfy position you are lying on the beach, remove the book from its cellophane holder, go to the next page, and replace the book in the cellophane holder. Then you lie back down on the beach.

Easy as. Yeah?

Oh, and you had to build it yourself. Few items in 'The Apprentice' ever come pre-built; it's a standard ploy by the producers to make the candidates look stupid as they fanny around legoing their items together in front of buyers.

When I'm reading at the beach, I like to position my book in a ready-made holder. I call it 'my hand.'

The girls managed to squabble, bitch, fight and squeal their way through the whole task, led by yeller-in-chief, Joanna. There's a lot of Alpha Females in this year's Apprentice and they are hell to listen to. Laura, the team manager this week, is one of the quieter ladies and behaved like a student teacher faced with an unruly fifth-form class. She dithered and huffed and broke down in tears.

Absurdly, the buyers at Boots said they would take some of their daft products if the girls offered exclusivity. But dithering Laura decided not to. Why, I don't know. I would have paid someone in pints of my own blood to take them off my hands. The girls did not sell one single item as a result of this error, as Boots wanted to corner the market in shit canvas book holders.

So Stella's boys won and got to knock balls with her at Wentworth golf course.

The girls' team yelled their way through recrimination time at the greasy spoon cafe and yelled their way through the boardroom.

I'm just glad my parents didn't send me to an all girls school.

Lord Sugah (doesn't that sound like a rapper or maybe 1920s jazz artiste?) told them off for yelling and then sacked quiet, unassuming Joy. She seemed nice in a jolly hockey-sticks sort of way but then nice doesn't win reality TV shows.